


An Idiot's Guide To Falling In Love With An Idiot

by pointandpounce



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: First Kiss, Light Petting, M/M, Mild Language, Pining, Rin is Stupid, Suggestive Themes, canon adjacent, christmas in june, so is Ryuji
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 09:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19353766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pointandpounce/pseuds/pointandpounce
Summary: “I owe you one!”“Eh?”“For the paper earlier!” Rin spun and dropped his ass on the edge of the fountain, right next to Ryuji, sprawling out so their thighs brushed. Goosebumps marched up Ryuji’s neck to bristle his hairline. “And to pay you back for tutoring me.”“I’ve never tutored you,” Ryuji said, then started to sweat despite the cold because deductive reasoning was his constant companion and he somehow knew exactly what was coming next.“Yeah, about that…”





	An Idiot's Guide To Falling In Love With An Idiot

**Author's Note:**

> hello please accept this bon/rin nonsense from a lowly anime-only person. this would take place at some imaginary point at True Cross where it's winter, and everyone knows about Rin's demon heritage, but no major shit is going down <3 enjoy!

\----

According to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the deepest circle of hell is encased in ice. On an insignificant day, mid-afternoon, mid-winter, during a _bitch_ of a cold snap, Ryuji was uniquely positioned to confirm that theory.

For all the spell circles and holy talismans protecting the borders of True Cross Academy, no one had ever shelled out for any damn climate control. The cram school was so freezing that Ryuji’s hand trembled around his pencil. Jaw clenched from frustration and a chill that rivaled the winter draft of the temple he’d grown up in, he shakily translated horizontal lines of Greek to vertical Japanese characters in his notebook. Shit, he would have sold his soul for a space heater.

The cold had at least one positive effect on the class dynamic. Rin was _awake_ for once, wrapped down to his feet in a blanket like a big wool crepe. He muttered to himself, eyes snapping between the blackboard and a crumpled sheet of loose leaf paper. Paper he’d had to borrow from Ryuji at the beginning of class, Ryuji remembered with a spike of annoyance. Guy had the nerve to show up with a blanket but no school supplies? Ryuji was surprised Rin didn’t show up with a mug of fucking hot cocoa instead of a pencil. Disrespectful. Careless. _Cute._

The temperature did nothing to stop Ryuji’s face from bursting into all-over red. Before he snapped out of it, he unconsciously wrote the first symbol of Rin’s name. _Shit._ He went to erase it in big frantic sweeps, curving his arm around his notebook like Shima was trying to cheat off of it. It only succeeded in drawing Shima’s attention, of course, and the pink-haired bastard starting trying to peek in earnest.

“Thaaat doesn’t look like the Septuagint,” he teased, elbowing Ryuji right in the ribs. “What’s the deal? Updating your diary?”

“Just get back to work,” Ryuji grumbled, nailing Shima right back with an even stiffer elbow. 

The guest instructor’s lesson droned on. His heavy accent- something Eastern European, maybe?- and the flat nasal quality of his voice made him sound like a vacuum in use one room over. Mind-numbing. If Ryuji's bones hadn’t been rattling with a chill, he could have nodded off just like Rin so often did. It sucked to be this bored with a topic so important to his Meister title. It was dangerous to be bored.

Because the more bored he was, the more his eyes kept floating over to the back of Rin’s floppy, blue-black hair. The more he listened to Rin scribble, literally able to hear his mistakes, wanting to rush over and cover him in red marks. No- cover the _paper_ in red marks. Not Rin. _What?!_

In a choice of words especially unbecoming of an Aria, Ryuji muttered, “Goddammit.”

Okay, maybe Ryuji had a crush. Maybe he’d had a crush from the moment Rin dove into a reaper frog’s mouth to save him from himself. Maybe he’d had a crush before that, when Rin sauntered into class day one with a sword on his back and a chip on his shoulder. But it wasn’t something he’d ever act on, no matter how enticed he was by the idea of yanking Rin close by the collar and kissing him to death. They were classmates, they were rivals, they were both _boys_ , for fuck’s sake, even if one of them wasn’t technically human. Wasn’t gonna happen. Ryuji was strong enough to ignore it. No room for romance in the path of an ambitious young exorcist. 

Besides, how could he ever fall in love with someone so… _dumb_?

It wasn’t a judgement, of course. Or even a pure negative in regards to how he viewed Rin’s personality. The guy had sharp instincts, good battle sense, and a gruff, surprising emotional intelligence that Ryuji would have killed for a fraction of. What he lacked in book smarts he made up for in clutch decision-making and self-sacrifice and the indiscriminate kicking of asses. 

Still...Ryuji couldn’t help but think- _hope,_ on some level because getting over this crush would solve a whole host of problems- that the gap in their intellect made them totally incompatible. Did Ryuji want to sign up to date some idiot that forgot how to tie his shoes when he thought about it too hard? Did he want to kiss lips that once had the same grain of rice stuck to them for _two days_? To pet through and pull on hair that Rin once put clothes pins in to “make it dry faster”?

While Ryuji silently weighed his pros and cons, finding them perfectly matched, the instructor sniffed, stopped mid-sentence, and said “Is time for break now. Ten of minutes.”

The teacher shuffled out of the room slow and hung a right, clearly on the way to the faculty lounge for another serving of coffee.

“Maaaan!” Rin exclaimed once the classroom was unsupervised, bursting out of his blanket like a cocoon. He clenched and unclenched his fingers to wake them up. “It’s so cold in here!”

“Great observation,” Ryuji snapped, meaner than he’d meant to. His pencil eraser seemed fascinating all of a sudden.

If Ryuji’s tone bothered him, Rin didn’t show it. He pressed his palms together as if in prayer, then bridged them together and cracked all eight of his knuckles at once. “Wish I had some hand socks.”

“H….hand socks?” Shiemi repeated, eyebrows twitching with confusion under her bangs. “Do you mean gloves, Rin?”

“Seriously?” Kamiki was simultaneously horrified and amused, lifting an earmuff to make sure she’d heard him right. “You forgot the word gloves?”

“Not gloves, no no no,” Rin waved the girls off, eyes tipping up towards the ceiling. He snapped his fingers, trying to find the right word. “Those hand socks that make you look like a crab.”

A stunned silence reigned over all. Until Konekomaru quietly offered from a back row, “...mittens?”

“Yeah!” Rin lit up and pointed back at Konekomaru. “Hell yeah, mittens! That’s it!”

A sudden, uncomfortable warmth took hold low in Ryuji’s belly. _Cute,_ he thought, and kicked himself, and clenched his fist so hard his pencil bent.

\----

Ryuji’s next appointment to fall a just little bit more in love with Rin was about a half hour after class ended. Flipping through the fresh writing in his notebook to commit it to memory, Ryuji sat wide-legged on the lowest platform of True Cross Academy’s courtyard fountain. Campus was emptying out for the day, and he wasn’t accompanied by Shima or Konekomaru for once in his damn life. They’d rushed back to student housing to thaw out, less stubborn than Ryuji was about getting some sun, cold or no. Fine. More vitamin D for him.

It wasn’t awkward to be alone, though. Ryuji was relieved. Needed all the alone time he could get until he could figure out how to cure himself of the growing interest he was taking in Rin fucking Okumura. If only there was a verse or incantation that could help his condition. Demons could be exorcised. Why couldn’t _crushes_ on demons be exorcised?!

Overhead, the clock tower chimed the introductory notes of an advent Antiphon. There was a new tune each day leading up to Christmas, and though it was a bit strange and discordant, it gave Ryuji a sense of calm. Whatever ancient Benedictine monk that composed it couldn’t have predicted the tune would help a teenage boy forget about wanting to make out with the son of Satan. But Ryuji was grateful for it all the same, letting it wash over him and fill his head from the outside in. _Ahh,_ he thought, closing his eyes, angling his nose down into his scarf to hide it from the harsh wind. _Peace._

Maybe he was the dumb one, because for a moment Ryuji believed that peace might actually last. The final gong faded, and he heard accelerating footsteps to his left, along with a singsong “Yooooo!” 

“Oh _no,_ ” he said out loud, and whipped his head around. There he was. Rin, the world’s most adorable nightmare. He was tripping towards Ryuji in a smiling panic, like he was being pursued by an angry mob or something, and waving a yakisoba bun over his head.

“Got the last one!” Rin shouted, and slowed to a stop at Ryuji’s feet. Bending double to catch his breath, which was manifesting in white clouds, he weakly repeated “...Last one.”

The wrapped sandwich hit Ryuji in the middle of the chest. He caught it, barely, a pure reflex. Through the steamy plastic, he could feel that it was still hot.

“What the hell?” So he wouldn’t have to look Rin in the eyes, the stupid-bright-blue-catching-the-damn-sunset-eyes, Ryuji stared at the sandwich. “They stopped serving these at noon. Where’d you-”

“I have a guy,” Rin puffed, finally coming back up to full height. He threw a pop-star peace sign, and the weaponized charm of it rocked Ryuji like an uppercut. “Enjoy!”

“Why’d you even bring me this?” Ryuji asked, frowning with purpose, fully aware he sounded like an asshole. Not the best social defense mechanism, but his stomach had only just calmed down from the last time Rin funneled a truckload of butterflies directly into it. Sue him for overcorrecting.

“I owe you one!”

“Eh?”

“For the paper earlier!” Rin spun and dropped his ass on the edge of the fountain, _right_ next to Ryuji, sprawling out so their thighs brushed. Goosebumps marched up Ryuji’s neck to bristle his hairline. “And to pay you back for tutoring me.”

“I’ve never tutored you,” Ryuji said, then started to sweat despite the cold because deductive reasoning was his constant companion and he somehow knew exactly what was coming next.

“Yeah, about that…” Pursing his lips out and kicking at cobblestones with dull regulation shoes, Rin asked, “Could you tutor me in Biblical Languages? It’s my weakest subject, and thaaat’s saying something.”

Solutions came easily to Ryuji, and Rin’s question had the simplest answer of all. Ryuji dropped the yakisoba bun into Rin’s lap, stuffed his notebook back in his messenger bag, and said, “No.” 

Then he stood and tensed his legs to retreat. Maybe even sprint, knowing Rin had no chance of keeping up with him. What was most important was to get far away fast before he fucked up and said something as crazy as _yes._ One step, two steps, building momentum and _shit_!- Rin caught a handful of the back of Ryuji’s blazer. He stumbled back like he’d been clotheslined, turned on Rin with a snarl and a zip of splitting fabric.

“I said _no!_ What, d’you need Japanese lessons, too?!”

“Come on!” Rin looked ready to rumble, yakisoba bun lofted high, as if to deliver a killing blow with it. A Knight wielding a sandwich like a sword. “I gotta get my grades up before I bomb my exams, and you’re the smartest in class!”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” Not entirely true, because Ryuji’s chest swelled and cheeks burned from the compliment. Flattery had already gotten Rin some unconscious upper hand. 

“How ‘bout guilt, then?” Rin’s eyes sparked bluer in challenge. He pulled back the sandwich like the windup of a baseball pitch. “Bon! Ole buddy ole pal! Didn’t I save your life a coupla times?!” 

“Don’t you dare- wah!” The sandwich streaked past Ryuji impossibly fast, a blur of color and a waft of spices across the bridge of his nose. Pure luck was the only reason it didn’t nail him in the face. “Yeah, dumbass!” Sputtering, he pointed a pissed-off finger at Rin and power walked backwards. “You did save me! And I saved you right back! We’re even!”

“Well, then-!” Rin darted up and snatched one of Ryuji’s hands between his own. He leaned in so close that Ryuji could see it wasn’t just Rin’s canines that were sharp- even the incisors revealed by his grin terminated in a serrated edge. “If you tutor me, I’ll owe you another favor! Something better than a sandwich!” 

Ryuji stumbled back, definitely in annoyed avoidance and not because he’d had the split second whim to test the sharpness of Rin’s teeth with his _tongue._ His heel squashed into the discarded sandwich. His foot slipped out from under him in a big banana peel swoop. And as his skull bounced off the ground, unfortunately failing to give him a concussion and knock him out, Rin came tumbling down on top of him. 

Ryuji froze. Feeling the individual corners of cobblestones dig up into his back, straddled at the waist by Rin’s skinny-ass legs, staring at the orange-gold sky and wishing it would fall. Meanwhile, Rin was groaning into Ryuji’s sternum. _Wriggling_ , practically, to maximize the effort needed to sit up, the sympathy he hoped to get from saying, “Owww.”

“Miss me with the dramatics,” Ryuji growled, devoting the bulk of his willpower to ignoring how all of Rin’s weight was planted in his lap. “I saw you take a sword to the shoulder and you didn’t whine like that.”

Reminding Ryuji that there was a God, maybe one that _wasn’t_ trying to ruin his life just for fun, Rin rolled away of his own accord. They laid side by side, a couple of cloud-gazing kids. 

“Why’re you being a _dick_ about this? You still scared of me, or something?” Rin pouted. Ryuji didn’t _see_ him pout, but it was unmistakable in his voice. “Thought we were over that stage of our relationship.”

Uh oh. They had a relationship? Rin was keeping track of imaginary milestones in it? Ryuji’s heart sped up, came unanchored, seemed to flit around his chest cavity like the birds still streaking the sky overhead. 

“I’m not scared,” Ryuji began, aware his resolve was bending. Also aware from his peripheral vision that Rin was staring at him, probably not even blinking, the gorgeous little creep, “I’m just-” _Busy. Tired. Pretty sure if we’re ever alone in a room together I’ll make a move on you._ “-ughhhh _hhhh_!” Most of Ryuji’s worst decisions were preceded by a similar noise. He came up to a sitting position, propped his elbows on his knees, and slumped over in defeat. “Fine.” His head hung low. “I’ll tutor you.”

“You will?!” Rin planted his hands and kipped up to his feet, all joy and natural athleticism. The too-blue sparkle of his eyes made Ryuji physically flinch. “Oh man, you won’t regret it!”

“I already regret it.” Now there was a little oasis of honesty. “Two hours. Once a week on Sunday afternoons.”

“Yeah, perfect!” Rin stuck his hand out to shake- or could it be to help him up? Ryuji didn’t take it. He didn’t want to know how hard it might be to let go.

“You gotta apply yourself, alright?” Rearranging his blazer, his bag, the necktie that went askew when he fell, Ryuji glared up at his new pupil. “No slacking. No _sleeping_. No small-talk.” 

Once standing, he tipped his eyes down to compensate for their difference in height. Trying to loom to the best of his ability, not that he thought Rin had ever fallen for the delinquent facade. “Got it, mittens?”

“Got it! Done! See you Sunday!” Because Ryuji had dodged his handshake, Rin locked in their agreement with a friendly punch to his shoulder. It didn’t hurt. Or did it? He’d never know, because what Rin said next made Ryuji’s brain do a factory reboot. “I’ll be your teacher’s pet, promise!”

Then Rin was off like a shot, swiping the squished sandwich off the ground and starting to unwrap it as he trotted away. Ryuji remained glued in place, mouth gone dry, head gone fuzzy with broken-record repeats of the phrase _teacher’s pet_. And all the better-behind-closed-doors shit that called up. Bitten apples, caned wrists, thigh-skimming socks, the letters A aaaall the way through F, because _fuck,_ was he gonna have a dream about Rin wearing the girl’s uniform?

_Again?_

_Cute,_ Ryuji thought, and indulged in the mental image of Rin with a pink hair clip, instead of a plain silver one.

\----

Funny how a crush can turn the smallest thing into a crisis of faith. 

The variety of faith being tested during that first tutoring session? Ryuji’s, in his ability to survive it. Everything Rin did- _everything_ \- was stupid. Infuriating. _Cute._ From how he chewed his pen to how he hacked and sputtered when ink got in his mouth, turning his tongue gray. And Ryuji didn’t know if his smitten heart or the rage vein on his temple would pop first.

Ten minutes in, they got kicked out of the library. It was a miscalculation on Ryuji’s part to suggest they meet there in the first place. Hell, he knew Rin didn’t have anything resembling an inside voice. But Ryuji wanted to make sure they were surrounded by people, closely supervised, and across from each other at a table wide enough that their feet wouldn’t touch. An entire landscape of reference materials between them, looking down at books instead of at each other. It was the safest strategy. 

A strategy that was working...until Rin pulled out a bright yellow highlighter and started going to town on a 500 year old Constantinople Pentateuch.

“What are you, a bouncer?! What’s with the upper arm strength?!” Rin shouted as the librarian dragged him out by the collar and pitched him into the hallway. Ryuji followed, muttering apologies and feeling every pair of eyes in the whole atrium on them. The double doors creaked loudly, hilariously slow as they closed. 

“I can’t take you anywhere!” Resisting the urge to slap Rin on the back of the head, because who knows what Ryuji’s hands would get up to once they touched Rin’s hair, he stomped away in a random direction. “I got a one-week ban just by association! Dumbass! This was such a terrible idea!”

“How’m I supposed to remember the important stuff if I don’t highlight it?” Rin countered, sulking a few strides back. 

“Repetition! Paying attention! Hell, who am I kidding- you probably just wanted to color something!”

“Ohhhhh, I mean, yeah. I was _amazing_ at coloring back in the day. Crayons were my jam.” 

“By jam, you mean you ate ‘em, right?”

“Couple of times. The mac and cheese one was a total letdown.”

“Hah…” A short, sharp exhale, since Ryuji was too angry to laugh. By that point they’d naturally gravitated towards the main entrance of the research building. Ryuji squared up and kicked it open, Rin darting through behind him in the nick of time. “Bet you couldn’t even color inside the lines.”

“That was a choice, dude! I was keeping it…” As they descended the stairs, Rin popped his hands into a series of invisible starbursts. He whispered _pow!_ with every single one. “Savant bard!”

“What the..?” Harder to translate than ancient Greek, but Ryuji managed. “...it’s _avant garde._ ”

“That’s what I said. Anyway,” Rin overtook Ryuji and planted in front of him, causing them to bump chests in the middle. “Your place or mine?”

Abject panic shot up from the core of Ryuji’s belly. “What?”

“For the rest of the tutoring session!” An expectant, earnest glow seemed to surround Rin like a halo. Wasn’t he a demon? Was that even allowed? _Cute,_ Ryuji thought, restraining his own forearm with his opposite hand to avoid touching Rin’s cheek.

“I was really starting to catch on. Let’s keep the momentum going!”

“Yeah, there’s no momentum left after you desecrate an artifact. We’re done for the day.” A sidestep, and Ryuji was speeding out of immediate danger. “Actually?” he added, injecting a skip into his step, fine with leaving Rin in the dust. “We’re done for good! You’re clearly not taking this seriously, and I’m done wasting my time!”

 _Nice._ Despite how every traitorous teenage fiber of his being craved some alone time with Rin, and urged him to go after the perfect opportunity for it...he’d drawn an authoritative boundary. Just like it started, with a shouted conversation under open sky, the arrangement was over. _Whew._ That was a close one.

As he continued in the direction of his dorm building, Ryuji was already looking forward to locking him room’s door behind him and drowning his frustrations in independent study. Psalms, maybe- something light and poetic. Or he could reread what they’d been looking over in the library, so he could cleanse his palate from how Rin had completely, utterly disrespected the venerable text of James 4.

A shout from behind him made Ryuji tilt his head around. Rin had taken a wide power stance, feet apart, both palms cupped around his mouth in a flesh and blood megaphone.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you?! Do they not come from the desires that battle within you?! You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight! You do not have because you do not ask God! When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get upon your own lusts!”

Yelled as it was, Rin’s recitation was crisp and reverent in tone. And holy shit, was the content of the verses ever relevant to the situation. If Ryuji’s bag had been in his hand instead of slung across his back, he would have dropped it. 

“Not bad,” Ryuji said, careful and even as he could be under the circumstances. In reality, he was, what’s the phrase? Fucking _floored._ His heartbeat accelerated to a painful degree as Rin jogged up to his side again.

“Guess you’re a better tutor than you thought, asshole-sensei!” Rin exclaimed, all wild blue eyes, floppy black hair, and that grin like a friendly bear trap. Hell was prettier than Ryuji had been led to believe. “So let’s keep it up!”

Persistent bastard…! Virus-like, practically, in how determined Rin was to pursue and consume and ruin him. Yep, Rin was going to push the subject to the ends of the earth, to the end of _time_ , and Ryuji was never going to win a battle of attrition with his arms twitching to wrap around Rin’s waist. It was over. Ryuji lost. And after a quick check of the immediate vicinity to confirm they were all but alone in the True Cross quad, faced the heavens and barked, “Fuck!”

“Awesome!” Rin took Ryuji’s curse as a yes. “Lead the way! Oh man, I’ve never been in the main dorms!” he babbled, pushing on Ryuji’s back with both hands to hurry him forward. “Are they co-ed? Got any girl neighbors?”

“Of course not, you idiot-” 

“Aww, too bad.”

When Rin looped his arm under Ryuji’s and held on tight, it was somehow familial and foreign. Made Ryuji go stiff from the waist up and noodly from the waist down. He let himself get dragged along, though, Rin’s idle chatter pinging off his ears. Any answers he gave were reflexive, robotic. Before they rounded the final corner on the long walk to the dorm building, Rin had individually forgotten the words for ice skates (knife shoes, he called them), velcro (itchy tape), and kicking (leg punches).

 _Cute,_ Ryuji thought, and didn’t correct Rin on a single one. 

\----

 

“Well...” Ryuji began, eyes scanning the page all the way to the bottom then starting over. It was an assessment far more than two hours in the making. Ideally, he was grading an entire chapter of Acts transcribed to modern Japanese. _Ideally._ “Aside from how you have the worst handwriting in the world…”

“Just tell me how I did, already,” Rin demanded, yanking up the hood of Ryuji’s borrowed pullover with a deepening frown. The sleeves were so long that his hands were hidden. He looked like a grumpy doll, sitting cross-legged on the bed with big thermal socks on. Luckily, Ryuji had gotten over the initial thrill of seeing Rin wearing his clothes by that point. He sighed, set the paper between his Greek textbook and his teapot, and reported:

“It’s all correct.”

“Really?”

“Full marks.”

“Really?!” Two balls of fabric that suggested fists shot up to Rin’s mouth. “Holy shit. Holy _shit_ , I actually nailed it! Guess a stopped clock really is right once a day!”

“Shouldn’t be so shocked about it,” Ryuji broke in, ignoring how Rin fucked up yet another idiom. He was tired of all the self-deprecation. There’d been a lot of it from Rin, just casual condemnations under his breath as he studied and scribbled, calling himself an idiot, cursing the tiniest mistakes. That was something Ryuji didn’t expect, something that broke his heart just a little. He felt guilty that he’d ever contributed to that frame of mind by calling Rin a dumbass to his face. He felt even guiltier that he’d said it behind Rin’s back. “You paid attention. And it paid off. That’s kind of how learning _works._ ”

“S’that so?” Sliding down from the bed to kneel on the hardwood, Rin smoothed a hand over the open textbook he’d been cramming from. He gulped, wide-eyed, as if he’d just been let in on a juicy secret. “It’s like magic.”

“Wait...you telling me you’ve never done this before?” Without being prompted, Ryuji poured Rin another serving of tea. It was still hot, and Rin was still shivering, and he’d sure as hell earned it. “Just sat down and concentrated on schoolwork for a couple of hours?”

“Yukio tried to get me to...but he was too busy to like- _watch_ me. Or explain things when I had questions. So I’d slack off.” Rin strummed through the book. His eyes leapt around all the ancient characters he had a brand-new understanding of. He lifted and conveyed the tea to his lips without looking. _Sip._ “Guess I needed someone like you to...you know.”

“To what?” Ryuji didn’t feel like he’d done much of anything, other than exist across the low coffee table, grunt and narrow his eyes every time Rin started staring out the window. It probably helped that there were no posters on the walls to catch Rin’s hair-trigger attention span. 

Rin sipped at his teacup again, licked around the rim in a half-arc. Nice and quiet, with a playful flash to his gaze: “To crack the whip.”

The word choice and the raw, intentional sensuality with which it was delivered might as well have been a full-on slap to the face. Ryuji’s leg jumped like it’d been stimulated with a reflex hammer, upsetting the table, knocking the teapot hard on its side and making its contents splatter in a dozen directions. 

Rin did what he could to save the textbook by snatching it off the table. Then just as quickly, he yelped and dropped it in his lap with a heavy, audible thump. “Ow, shit!” Hissing, he rolled back a sleeve to squint at the tip of his thumb. “The book bit me!”

“P...papercut?” Ryuji’s best guess, now that he was more willing and able to see the world through Rin’s one-of-a-kind lens. And it was a good reminder that he must have been fucking imagining things when it seemed, for a heady split second, that Rin was making a pass at him. A guy capable of seduction and a guy who’d accuse an inanimate object of biting him- those were _two different guys._ Even Rin, who so often made the opposite of sense, couldn’t embody such a stark contradiction. Right? Trying to regulate his breathing, trying to reclaim some control of the situation, Ryuji extended his hand and said, “Show it to me. I’ve got bandages.”

Rin obeyed without hesitation. Leaning in, placing his palm face-up in Ryuji’s and wiggling his thumb. “It’s a bad one. See?”

“No, actually...” Ryuji turned Rin’s hand, searching for a wound and finding none. When he lifted his gaze, Rin’s met him practically nose to nose. 

“Guess it healed already. Demon blood and all. Heh.” Rin chuckled, then perked up and exclaimed, “Damn! Your hand’s cold!” 

“Well, yeah. It’s cold in here.” Ryuji’s heartbeat shook his voice between every word. It was far, _far_ too easy to believe this was all on purpose. Especially when Rin brought Ryuji’s hand up to the level of his mouth. His eyes lifted, his lips parted, and he ghosted warm air over Ryuji’s knuckles.

“Better?”

A million times worse was more like it, but Ryuji still said. “Yeah.”

Then Rin didn’t let go. Just kept breathing close to Ryuji’s skin, tipping his head subtly for better coverage and maintaining eye contact. Every puff of air made Ryuji weaker in the knees, hotter under the collar, and fuck- he could smell Rin’s fresh, sporty shampoo without even trying. 

“Hey, Bon-bon.” Ryuji’s most loathed nickname, but the use of it couldn’t snap him out of observing how, at close range, Rin’s skin looked like pristine, undisturbed custard just waiting to get lapped up. “Why is it that you breathe cold air when you oooh, and hot air when you ahhh?”

“Conduction. Evaporation. Physics. Fuck if I know.” Ignorance was fine. Ignorance was kinda the only option in this unfamiliar territory. Because with each progressive word, Ryuji found himself leaning in and in until his field of vision was nothing but Rin goddamn Okamura. One small movement to free his hand and steady Rin’s jaw with his palm, one giant leap into the unknown. “I think I might kiss you, dude.” 

“Oh, for real?” 

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” They moved in tandem, Rin grasping Ryuji’s necktie and yanking him in, Ryuji knocking back Rin’s hood when he reached up to test the softness of his hair. Their mouths met. “I owe you a favor, right?”

It was a shitty, embarrassing kiss. All lopsided with clumsy tongues coming in at the wrong angles. Teeth became an in-the-way nightmare, and despite Rin’s being sharper, Ryuji seemed to be doing more damage with his own. Their foreheads connected about as much as their lips did. Considering it was Ryuji’s first kiss, though, it was also the best one he’d ever had. 

“Do-over,” Rin gasped when they drew back simultaneously, breaking the kiss, both blushing dark. His tail had wormed its way out of his slacks, whipped choppy behind him, occasionally stiffening from a curlicue into a straight line. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ryuji agreed. The table was between them, and getting in the way, so Ryuji flipped the whole thing blithely off to the side. It was faster than crawling around it. The teapot shattered and he didn’t give a shit because he’d clean up later and there were far more pressing, Rin-related matters to attend to. He quite literally leapt forward, pinning Rin by his narrower shoulders to the side of the bed. Licking at his lower lip, then Rin’s. “Didn’t count.” 

The second kiss was better. No obstacle preventing them from slamming their chests together, no mystery to how they tasted in each other’s mouths. Best of all, Ryuji was beyond caring how they’d gotten here, a willing pursuant to every new sensation. He fell against Rin’s body, so sweetly aware of how he was bigger and stronger than the boy squirming underneath him. Rin’s tongue slid over and under his own, searching and trying to win, his teeth deadly-feeling as Ryuji had hoped, but gentle. Aware of their own inherent danger. And when Rin sighed into the kiss, surrendering with a helpless grasp that eased Ryuji’s headband out of his hair, Ryuji stopped wondering whether he was in love. He knew he was. He _knew_.

“I’ve been trying to make this happen forever,” Rin confessed in the narrow gap between two breathtaking kisses. “N’you never caught on. God, you’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, yeah-” Ryuji’s mouth got braver, took a jaunt down the side of Rin’s neck. “-I’m an idiot. I’m the world’s biggest dumbass.”

“Learn to- _ah_ \- t-take a hint…” As his collarbone was bared and kissed and laved on, Rin’s words shook in a way that made Ryuji feel especially powerful. One of Rin’s pale hands clutched at the bedspread over his shoulder. The other scrabbled at the floor, finding a pile of papers to crumple with blindly clenching fingers. 

“Can’t. I’m too stupid,” Ryuji said, crowding closer and sucking at the flat of Rin’s collarbone like a peppermint stick, like he could melt off a mouthful if he worked hard enough. “You gotta spell it out for me. What do you want?”

Rin whined and tossed his head back to give Ryuji more skin to explore. With a bitten lip smile at the ceiling: “Y….O….U…”

“Holy shit, man.” Frantic, wet kisses dragged back up Rin’s neck, a path marked in spit-shiny circles and pink swaths of beard burn. “Yeah, I-”

“R….” 

“Holy _shit_ -” Ryuji choked as Rin lowered his chin, leaned in lips to ear, and whispered the rest of it. Punctuated with a purring, toothy kiss to Ryuji’s jawline. Two more words, seven more letters, and there’s no _way_ Rin learned any of _that_ from the Bible.

“Did I spell it right?” Rin asked, pulling back with a slow blink and a lazy smile that communicated exactly who was in control of the situation. 

“Yes,” Ryuji said, and brought Rin down to the floor with a clumsy thump, and over the next few fast, sweet, milestone minutes of his life, he was more than fine with being the dumb one.


End file.
